STARTUP STAGE: ViaHero pairs travelers with local experts who plan their trips

ViaHero is a trip-planning service that connects travelers
with local experts who plan personalized itineraries for them.

Currently the service is available in Cuba, Japan and
Colombia.

Describe both the business and technology aspects of your
startup.

Our marketplace allows travelers to hire locals to plan
their trip. For $25 to 35 per day, the locals, aka Heroes, build a personalized
guidebook based on your interests and budget, arrange anything you need on the
ground and consult you on where to go, what to do and how to do it. All
information in the guidebook is viewed in an offline app during your trip, so you
don’t need any access to data or WiFi.

Company

ViaHero

Location

New York

Website

www.viahero.com

Twitter

www.twitter.com/myviahero

Facebook

www.facebook.com/myviahero

What inspired you to create this company?

While traveling to over 45 countries, I saw how powerful it
was to be in the know ahead of your trip. Having local insight of where to go,
what to do and how to do it enabled me to personally be as confident traveling
in a foreign country as I was in my hometown. I got to dive in deeper and learn
more about the local way of life.

I’ve also spent time as a travel agent, and I saw three
things wrong with the current model:

Trust: The agent’s revenue model is tied to commissions,
mostly from tour packages, which incentivizes the agent to make your trip more
expensive and less personalized.

Local knowledge: The agent often lacks real local
knowledge, and money-saving techniques. A local can help a traveler get a lot
more out of their experience because they know of all of the possibilities that
exist in their city or country.

Deliverable: The travel agent is focused on delivering
bookings, since this is how they make their income, but we’ve found that the
average traveler is more interested in a focus on trip-planning assistance.

Strengths: Our end product that travelers receive, and our
network of local Heroes who want to spread the word. Our net promoter score (NPS) is 82 across
6,000 travelers so far.

Weaknesses: Convincing people to spend money on a new line
item in their travel budget, even though it saves them money in the end.

Opportunities: Launching in more markets that people want
to travel to will allow our strong word-of-mouth referral network to really
take off.

Threats: A big player deciding to do this before we get
escape velocity.

What are the travel pain points you are trying to alleviate
from both the customer and the industry perspective?

Planning a trip yourself is time‐consuming, intimidating and
stressful. The problem nowadays is that there is too much information, so it’s
overwhelming to try to plan your trip. Using a travel agent usually ends up costing more money and
ends up being less personalized. Tour packages and guided trips are expensive and lack
independence.

Tell us what process you've gone through to establish a
genuine need for your company and the size of the addressable market.

We started by doing user testing as a travel agent and
providing different services. A personalized guidebook and on‐the‐ground
arrangements really allowed people to feel like they were taking the travel
planning burden off of their plate, but still feel like they could get the
ideal experience and remain independent during their trip. We’ve launched in
Cuba, Japan and Colombia and confirmed that this service is something that
people really love.

How and when will you make money?

We make money now via the trip-planning fee that the local
Hero charges, which amounts to $25 to 35 per day, and we keep a portion of the
fee.

What are the backgrounds and previous achievements of the
founding team, and why do you have what it takes to succeed with this business?

Greg Buzulencia , founder and CEO: He grew a previous startup
from three employees to a team of 40 and an exit with Amazon. He also has spent
the last 20 years in and out of the travel agent industry, and has a keen
understanding of exactly what people want when planning their trip.

Rachel Hawkes, founder and vice president of product: She was the director
of operations at a translation company, has a linguistics background and can
effectively communicate what really resonates with users about ViaHero.

Danielle Reyes, director of operations: After
operationalizing global expansion for Uber, Startup Weekend and Techstars,
Danielle has a sixth sense on what it takes to expand into new markets.

What's been the most difficult part of founding the business
so far?

Every founder thinks that the most difficult part of
founding a business is building the right product. That’s easy: Listen to your
customers. The most difficult part is growing and operating a team under
constrained resources.

Generally, travel startups face a fairly tough time making
an impact ‐ so why are you going to be one of lucky ones?